


When the Rain Starts

by cosmic_llin



Category: The Worst Witch (TV 2017)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Caretaking, Disability, Friendship, Gen, Injury Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:20:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23616661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmic_llin/pseuds/cosmic_llin
Summary: Hecate brews a potion to help Dimity with her magical muscle injury.
Relationships: Dimity Drill & Hecate Hardbroom, hints of past Dimity Drill/Arabella Hempnettle
Comments: 18
Kudos: 49





	When the Rain Starts

**Author's Note:**

> This story contains spoilers up to S04E08.

As potions mistress, Hecate was occasionally called upon to brew everyday healing draughts that were simple enough not to require a qualified healer. Accordingly, two weeks ago she had provided Miss Drill with a concoction to help ease her magical muscle strain.

That morning she had received a note asking for some more. Once classes were finished she set straight to work on it, and Dimity herself appeared as Hecate was bottling it.

‘Your potion, as requested,’ Hecate said, stoppering the bottle and handing it over.

‘Thanks,’ Dimity said, frowning down at it.

Exchange completed, Hecate turned and started to clean her cauldron, but Dimity didn’t leave.

‘It doesn’t seem to be getting any better,’ she said in a small voice. 

Hecate turned back to her, ready to defend the efficacy of her potion, but the look on Dimity’s face stopped her in her tracks. She wasn’t complaining - she was frightened.

This sort of thing was usually Ada’s department, but Hecate made the attempt.

‘Magical muscle injuries can sometimes take a while to heal,’ she said. ‘A lack of noticeable improvement at this stage is certainly nothing to be concerned about.’

‘It’s only a flare-up! I thought for sure I’d just need a couple of weeks and I’d be back on my feet…’

From what little Hecate knew about the subject, that had been on the optimistic side. ‘It may take longer than you hope,’ she said, trying to make it come out gently. ‘But that doesn’t mean the rest and the potions aren’t working. You must simply be patient.’

‘Patient? You try teaching double chanting to the first years and then see how patient you feel!’

Hecate looked sharply at her.

‘I’m sorry… that was uncalled for.’

‘Apology accepted,’ said Hecate.

She’d never seen Dimity act that way before. She’d seen her irritated, harassed, worn out at the end of term like anyone else, but never this frustrated. It took a lot to deflate the bubble of cheerfulness that she seemed to float around in. 

Oddly it made Hecate feel more sympathy for her, not less.

‘Anyway… thank you for the potion,’ said Dimity. ‘I’ll keep trying.’

After she had left, Hecate started work on another batch, taking even more than her usual care.

* * *

Six weeks later, it was becoming clear that Dimity’s recuperation would not be swift, and a visit to a healer had confirmed that her best option was to continue the current course of treatment, without expecting immediate results.

‘I just… I don’t feel like myself,’ Dimity sighed, perching on Hecate’s chair and watching her work. ‘I can’t do any of the things that I like most about my life, about being me. It makes my brain feel itchy.’

Hecate searched for something reassuring to say, but came up empty.

‘I don’t blame you,’ she admitted instead. ‘I’d feel wretched if I couldn’t teach potions.’

‘And seeing Miss Hempnettle with the girls… ugh, it makes me… it makes me so…’ She tailed off.

‘I gather you’re not her biggest fan,’ Hecate observed, checking the consistency of the potion in her cauldron.

‘You might say that,’ said Dimity. ‘We used to be… I thought we were… well. I don’t trust her, that’s all. And I don’t like her having responsibility for our girls.’

‘Her references were excellent.’ said Hecate. ‘If you’re concerned, I’m sure Ada would…’

Dimity shook her head. ‘No, no… I already talked to her and we decided not to do anything. I’m sure it’s just me. I’m holding a grudge. I’m being unfair.’

‘Sometimes holding a grudge is entirely fair,’ Hecate observed.

‘Still,’ said Dimity. ‘She hasn’t done anything wrong here, that I know of. I don’t want to be the cause of her losing her job.’

‘Suit yourself,’ said Hecate, pouring the finished potion into the bottle. ‘There, that should be enough for the next month.’

‘Thanks,’ said Dimity.

‘You’re welcome,’ said Hecate.

Dimity was right, Hecate reflected as she watched her go. She wasn’t herself. For the last few weeks she’d been very subdued. Not that in some ways it wasn’t an improvement: her relentlessly chipper breakfast conversation had always grated on Hecate, who wasn’t a morning person - but oddly Hecate now found herself almost missing it.

She just liked things and people to be in their proper places, that was all. Dimity in the chanting classroom instead of out on the sports field or up on her broom was just… wrong. Hecate was simply looking forward to things going back to normal.

* * *

‘The chanting display at today’s assembly went well, I thought,’ Hecate said as Dimity waited for her potion, a few weeks later.

‘It wasn’t bad, was it?’ Dimity agreed. ‘I could almost start to like teaching chanting, in spite of myself.’

‘Almost?’

Dimity shrugged. ‘Don’t get me wrong, it was so kind of Miss Cackle to find me something else to do. And it’s satisfying when it goes right. If I have to be teaching chanting, I’m glad I’m doing it here, with kids I already know. I feel a bit out of my depth, though. I wish Gwen was still here.’

‘I assumed you were corresponding with her?’

‘Oh, I am, she’s been very helpful. But she’s off enjoying retirement, and I don’t want her to feel like she has to rush back and help me every five minutes.’

‘Ada is always trying to impress upon the girls that it’s all right to ask for help when you need it,’ Hecate said.

Dimity snorted. ‘I can’t believe you, of all people, can say that to me with a straight face. You won’t even let someone else chop your herbs for you when you make a potion.’

‘I didn’t say I was a good example to follow,’ said Hecate primly. ‘And anyway, that’s an entirely different situation. Nevertheless, if it would make a difference, I believe there are some old chanting notes and teaching guides in the archives. I could find them for you, if you’d like.’

‘Oh… well, thank you. If it’s not too much trouble…’

‘It’s no trouble at all,’ Hecate assured her.

She went down and fetched the notes that same evening, and when she brought them to Dimity she didn’t say a word about how long it had taken her to find them and how dusty and cold it had been in the basement.

* * *

The door of the lab slammed shut and Dimity limped in, bashing her cane on the stone floor with every step.

‘Miss Drill!’ said Hecate. ‘You’ll rattle all my potions off the shelves!’

‘I’d like to rattle _her_ until she falls off something!’

‘Ah. I assume we are speaking of Miss Hempnettle?’

‘Oh! I’m Miss Hempnettle! I’m such a good teacher, I’m sending Enid to the Witch World Games!’ Dimity simpered. 

‘Surely you’re pleased to see Enid Nightshade doing so well?’

Dimity’s face contorted into four or five expressions before settling into the miserable one Hecate had seen her wearing much more often lately.

‘Of course I am,’ she said. ‘I’m delighted for Enid. But I’m scared that Arabella might not be looking after her like I would. And… I suppose part of me is sad that it’s not me helping Enid with this. It should have been me. And Arabella just… swooped in and took everything that mattered to me. Again.’

‘Again?’

Dimity was silent for a while, worrying at a loose thread on the sleeve of her robe. Hecate left her to it, measuring herbs into the potion and stirring.

‘Did you ever hear anything about the first time I injured my magical muscle?’ Dimity asked, after a while.

Hecate vaguely recalled something from the news at the time, and it had been the subject of a bit of speculation when Dimity had started teaching - speculation that Ada had firmly squashed.

‘You were injured in the run up to the Witch World Games?’ she said. ‘I gather you made the transition to teaching after that.’

‘Eventually,’ said Dimity. ‘It took me a long time to recover. Not just physically. I was heartbroken, when Arabella… when I couldn’t compete in the games. And then, when I realised that I would never fly professionally again… let’s just say I didn’t take it as well as I could have done.’

For a moment Hecate recalled vividly the pain of climbing the tower steps, believing that at the top she would be giving up her magic forever.

‘I don’t think anyone would take that well,’ she said.

‘Oh, I got over it in the end,’ said Dimity, with a lightness that sounded forced to Hecate’s ears. ‘But it was a really long time before I felt like myself again. And this flare-up just reminds me of everything I lost, and I’m so scared of going back to the way I felt then… Hecate, it’s been months. What if it doesn’t get better this time?’

Hecate had never been good at comforting lies. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Perhaps it won’t. But based on my limited knowledge, it seems likeliest that it will. Either way, all you can do is carry on as best as you are able.’

Dimity sighed. ‘This is why I can talk to you about this stuff,’ she said. ‘You tell it to me straight, no sugar-coating.’

‘And… that’s what you want?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘Well then… I’m glad I can help.’

* * *

‘I should have done more to warn Enid, somehow,’ Dimity said.

She was sitting on the floor of the potions lab, the wall supporting her back.

‘It sounds to me as though you did everything you could,’ said Hecate, eyeing the potion. It had almost reached the right thickness.

‘D’you think so? I don’t know.’

‘What I know,’ said Hecate, ‘is that no matter how hard adults try, teenage girls will make bad decisions. Sometimes all we can do is pick up the pieces afterward. At least this situation ended with Enid safe and well and off to pursue her dreams.’

At that, Dimity burst into tears. ‘First I got injured, and having to teach chanting was bad enough,’ she gulped, ‘and then Arabella showed up, and I tried so hard not to let her get to me, and I started to wonder if maybe I really had got it all wrong, and then she did this… and now Enid’s gone away… and I’m _still_ not better!’ She smacked her hand on the floor, hard enough that it must have hurt. ‘It’s been months and I’m so sick of it! Why is nothing going right for me this year? If only I’d been more careful and hadn’t managed to set off my old injury again in the first place, none of this would have happened!’

Hecate moved around the desk, knelt beside Dimity, and ventured to pat her forearm. ‘Blaming yourself never fixes anything,’ she said. ‘It took me too long to accept that. Don’t follow my example.’

Dimity swallowed, then nodded. She wiped her face with her sleeve.

‘I’d been meaning to say, I was impressed by your speed potion,’ Hecate said.

‘You’re trying to distract me,’ said Dimity.

‘Still,’ said Hecate. ‘It was very fine work.’

‘Maybe if I never get better I can become a potions teacher instead,’ Dimity said, with a shadow of a smirk.

‘It wasn’t _that_ good,’ Hecate retorted.

‘Oh, don’t worry, I wouldn’t dare,’ Dimity said, and this time there was very definitely a grin. ‘Listen, Hecate… I’ve really appreciated your help this year.’

‘It’s a simple enough potion…’

‘Not just that. I mean everything.’

Hecate smiled, a little embarrassed. ‘It’s quite all right,’ she said. ‘Anyway, I think your potion is ready.’

She stood, and offered her hands to Dimity to help her up. Dimity took them, and Hecate pulled her back to standing. Dimity watched, leaning on her cane, while Hecate bottled the potion.

‘There,’ said Hecate. ‘That should be enough for another two weeks.’

Distantly, the bell rang to announce that dinner was being served. 

‘Would you like me to transfer us both to the hall?’ Hecate offered.

Dimity shook her head. ‘Thank you, but I prefer walking.’

‘In that case,’ said Hecate, offering Dimity her arm, ‘let me assist you.’

Dimity took Hecate’s arm and leaned a little of her weight on it, and they walked to dinner together.


End file.
